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by Thaddeus J. Wilson on September 4, 2010

While I don’t make a “twat” of myself, I am partial to following the ebb and flow of opinion as it is delivered on twitter. And it seems to me that an old story has been re-awakened and is causing the Tories a great deal of discomfort: that of the News of the World’s hacking of celebrity mobile phones.

I felt at the time the story first broke that Coulson had escaped incredibly lightly and that Cameron was clearly taking a big risk by hanging on to him. But it seemed to me that he had, in fact, escaped.

However, at the time, Coulson’s presence (or absence) was not as important to the Dirty Tricks Division of the Labour Party. Now that they have the sniff of an opportunity to damage Cameron in the eyes of the public, a curious alliance of bloggers, twitterers, Labour MPs, The Guardian and the New York Times has formed to make something of this. All of a sudden, Tom Watson has found a voice to complain about these alleged misdeeds, something that he was quite mellow about last time around. And indeed, the sight of the man whose name was most frequently associated with Damian McBride getting on his high moral horse is beyond ironic.

What appears to have eluded all these moral campaigners is that all the big names making a play here have actually got a financial interest in the story: The Guardian would love nothing better than to destroy the News of the World and severely tarnish the reputation of tabloids in general; the New York Times is worried about Murdoch having a presence in the US; and the Labour Party, who were in government when this story first broke and were in a position to do something about having it investigated fully have suddenly found it compelling to do something.

This is not to say that I believe Coulson or the News of the World are innocent (or guilty for that matter!) I’d be surprised if all newspapers did not indulge in deeds that were at the very least morally dubious — including the Guardian and the New York Times!

But those “little people” who are campaigning with such fervour over these alleged abuses and who are revelling in the company of MPs and important newspapers might want to take a step back and look at the motivation of all those who are fighting this fight.

Good point but I wonder do the people who read the Guardian and the NYT these days have any influence over NoW readers?

And while Guardian reders are sure Cameron is spawn of Satan those who read the News of the Screws are more interested in Jermaine Dafoe’s sex life.

Sarbanes OxleySeptember 4, 2010 at 14:36

Getting ‘intelligence’ on the enemy has been around since since neolithic man send one of their own up a tree to see how many cattle/sheep/women the other tribe had.

If you are making your ‘living’ out of being a celebrity/politician/royalty you expect that you being watched,recorded and taped, you have got to be pretty dumb if you don’t errr sorry we are talking Prescott here.

Labour and the Cons have always had their dirty tricks people, its easier to come up with a scandal to beat the other guy, than come up with a halfway decent policy that works. Ditto tabloids

“Hacking is about circumventing security, not being presented with them and passing them.”

Hacking is both of those activities and in fact in practice is most often the latter. – there also appears to be a false distinction here. The aim of a password is to prevent unathorised access – a stranger with no remit from the account holder accessing the account by guessing the password (rather than, for example, brute forcing it) is still circumventing security.

Have to agree there. Unathorised access is hacking, even if you can work out the password either from clues or trial and error. Trying out the default password is trial and error, it’s just that the first trial works!

ivanSeptember 4, 2010 at 12:23

So you are saying that if you leave your front door open and someone walks in then you have the right to complain that nanny state didn’t close it for you when in fact it is your responsibility.

The last 13 odd years has diminished, or indeed removed, the requirement for personal responsibility which we MUST get back before anything can advance!

“So you are saying that if you leave your front door open and someone walks in then you have the right to complain that nanny state didn

ivanSeptember 4, 2010 at 14:24

I agree it is trespass but there is a prevailing attitude that the state should have prevented the trespasser entering you door not you. This attitude is the one we need to remove and make people stand up for themselves and not leave it to someone else to do it for them.

If people leave their passwords on their devices on their default settings, it is their own stupid fault. It does not however prevent such access being both illegal and fitting the definition of hacking.

ivanSeptember 4, 2010 at 09:44

The words mountain and molehill spring to mind.

Dizzy has put it so well* Calling someone’s mobile, waiting for it to go to voicemail and then entering their four digit pin (0000) is not hacking. Hacking is about circumventing security, not being presented with them and passing them.

** Calling someone’s mobile, waiting for it to go to voicemail and then entering their four digit pin (0000) is not tapping. Tapping is the covert act of real-time interception of active communication links.

Thaddeus J. WilsonSeptember 4, 2010 at 09:56

Good point. While there is a dubious morality to such actions, if you do not take basic steps to protect yourself from possible miscreants, especially if you’re in the public eye, does that not reflect badly on you?

I found myself screaming at the TV with unaccostomed gusto last night. Whilst the headlines suggested that ‘new evidence’ had been found to implicate Coulson in the ‘phone tapping scandal’ and Prince Harry’s name and John Prescott’s was bandied around with abandon, not one item in the news that followed, actually tied Coulson into phone tapping. We had the reporter ‘Sean’ – who had been told that ‘he just had to get the job done’ as reason to reopen the deabete – so? His boss told him to get on with it and get the story however he had to do so – that doesn’t amount to Coulson implicated in phone tapping. We had Prescott whinging that he hadn’t been told whether or not his name was on the list of those tapped – so? That doesn’t implicate Coulson. We were retold of Clive Goodman who certainly was implicated in phone tapping – so? That doesn’t implicate Coulson. We were told of the ’4,000′ names on whatisnames list that had been tapped – so?I don’t think anyone has ever doubted that the NOW employed private detectives to tap phones; if you give a reporter expenses, and tell him he has to get the story, then he wil buy up the wrong donkey, tap phones, hire a lear jet, do whatever he can think of to get the story, blag, cheat, lie, and make innocent bystanders very unhappy – but none of that amounts to the charge that Coulson shouldn’t be in charge of communications ‘because he is implicated’ in phone tapping.Quite possibly Coulson did the same things himself when further down the rung – even that doesn’t amount to the charge made on TV that he was responsible for ‘ordering’ his reporters to tap phones. The smear tactics of Damian McBride are alive and well, aided and abetted by the reporters of Channel 4.– And they have the nerve to complain about bloggers?